Wednesday, April 30, 2014

“We captured, 48
hours ago, one of the masterminds of the armed insurrection against Venezuela.
He is called “el aviador”. (…) [He
was arrested] with arms, a lot of money, a lot of information. There he is,
smearing everyone, all the guarimberos
[protesters]. He was hiding [escondidito].
[He says] he receives money from the North, which he distributes, that he
planned the closing [of streets], that he paid for snipers that killed National
Guards,” declared Maduro.

He
also expressed surprise at the extent of the plot revealed by El Aviador, “I have to say it: more
people than I thought are implicated in these plans to fill our country with
violence, death and sicariato.”

This last word, sicariato, also links the plot to the
murder of Eliézer Otaiza last week. Maduro believes the death of the
revolutionary leader could be part of an armed insurgency that has bought into
the country “Colombian paramilitaries” and sicarios
to kill government officials. Referring to Otaiza’s death, Maduro
explained that there is “no such a thing a haphazard facts. We should not
lose sight of the frame that circumscribes the events of the last months. (...)
We are not dealing with normal people here, we are not dealing with people who want
to engage in politics. So we should not under estimate our security measures. I
have told you [government officials] that we have to be careful. In Venezuela
we are facing an armed insurrection that we have neutralized with intelligence,
with preventive measures.”

The objective of the Aviador’s plan would be, according to
Maduro, to “destroy Venezuelan democracy and impose a model of extreme capitalism
which would put an end to the social accomplishments of the Revolution, but
most of all [what they want] is to get ahold of [Venezuela’s] oil.”

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Yesterday marked the
15th anniversary of the
first referendum called for by President Chávez. In 25 April, 1999
Venezuelans were asked whether they accepted or not to summon a National
Constitutive Assembly to write a new constitution for the country. 87.75% of
voters responded affirmatively.

President Maduro commemorated
the events with a national radio and television cadena broadcast form the Caracas 23 de Enero parish.

Maduro
explained that the referendum started a cycle of elections that favored the
government. Because of that, the oligarchy began at least since 2001, a rightist
psychological war and a political campaign against the leader of the Bolivarian
Revolution. This campaign was, according to Maduro “the basis of hatred and
intolerance, which are now [also] the basis of the fascism of the Venezuelan
ultra-right.”

Maduro
also warned that the coup d’état against Chávez of April 2002 “has not ceased,”
he therefore asked his own followers, and the opposition, to “work in order to
close the coup cycle of the Venezuelan right.” He specifically linked the 2002
coup with recent opposition protests: “The coup that violently began in April
11 [2002] and has not ceased, and the guarimba
[street barricades] of the right continues despite the dialogue [called] by the
Government.”